Controversial trail of Mongolia’s former spy master www.news.mn

The trial of nine people including B.Khurts, the controversial former director of Mongolian’s General Intelligence Agency (GIA) and former Attorney General G.Erdenebat concluded on 19 August at the Tuv Province Criminal Court after six days of hearings. However, the judges ruled to return the case to the prosecution due to insufficient evidence.

Ban Ki-moon: international cooperation involving Mongolia expanding www.news.mn

Earlier yesterday (20 August) Ban Ki-moon, Chairman of the Boao Forum for Asia and former Secretary-General of the United Nations, delivered the keynote speech at the BFA Ulaanbaatar Conference. The event, which is being organised in Mongolia for the first time, started on 19 August and will finish tomorrow.

Construction industry capacity to be increased four times in coming decade www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/. It has been calculated that thanks to effective implementation of the state policy on construction sector in three stages, the current capacity of the industry is likely to grow 1.38 times in 2020, 2.6 times in 2025 and 3.9 times in 2028.

No meat exports and import during harvest to ensure stable food supply www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/. This year, a total of 361 thousand ha of land was sown, according to Ch.Ulaan, Minister of Food, Agriculture and Light Industry. Crop harvests in Bulgan, Khuvsgul, Orkhon, Arkhangai and Selenge aimags are predicted to be normal as planned. However, in some regions, including Tuv, Darkhan-Uul, Dornod, Khentii, Uvurkhangai and Uvs aimags and northern part Selenge aimag, harvests are likely to decline due to droughts and overheating.

Trump interested in buying Greenland www.nhk.or.jp

US President Donald Trump says he is interested in buying Greenland from Denmark.

Festival held to celebrate reindeer population growth www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/. A cattle census made at the end of 2018 shows that the number of reindeer population of Mongolia increased to 2396. In particular, reindeer herder families in the taiga area of Mongolia whose lives depend on their reindeers, had 814 reindeers by the end of 2016, however, the number reached 2396 reindeer herded by 85 families, increasing three times. As of now, in Tsagaannuur soum of Khuvsgul aimag has a population of 2006 people. Also, 755 Tuva people living in the western and eastern Taiga of Mongolia, receiving an allowance from the government.

Scaling up support for sustainable development: Mongolia on the rise www.unescap.org

Mongolia’s economic rebound in recent years reveals a country rising up to the challenges borne from adverse economic shocks. The country’s economic resilience comes as no surprise. Mongolia has responded well to near-term economic challenges and chartered its long-term path towards sustainable development despite its inherent constraints as a small and landlocked economy that is also highly dependent on natural resources. Mongolia prides itself as being one of the first countries to adopt the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with Mongolia’s Sustainable Development Vision 2030 receiving parliament approval in 2016 just six months after the adoption of the SDGs globally.

In particular, Mongolia’s policy experiences in areas of economic diversification, good governance and regional cooperation were well-exemplified by the Action Program of the Government of Mongolia for 2016-2020. So, Mongolia has utilized these policy tools to carve for itself strategic positions to weigh in on issues significant to the country’s national development outcomes. For example, Mongolia leads the global agenda of the needs and challenges faced by landlocked developing countries (LLDCs). The presence of the International Think Tank for LLDCs in Ulaanbaatar further highlights the key role of Mongolia as a credible broker of the LLDCs development agenda.

Mongolia has been active in implementing intergovernmental initiatives facilitated by UN ESCAP including the distinct but interrelated intergovernmental agreements on the Asian Highway Network, the Trans-Asian Railway Network, and Dry Ports. We welcome the recent development on the entry into force of the Intergovernmental Agreement on International Road Transport along the Asian Highway Network among China, Mongolia and the Russian Federation, supporting trilateral economic cooperation.

Currently, Mongolia has substantively engaged on trade facilitation initiatives including the Framework Agreement on Facilitation of Cross-border Paperless Trade in Asia and the Pacific. There is great potential for Mongolia to strengthen its role in the related area of transport facilitation, given its position as a transit point between big economies like China and the Russian Federation. Also, we are pleased that Mongolia is soon to become the seventh member of the Asia-Pacific Trade Agreement, a preferential regional trade agreement, open to all developing member States in Asia and the Pacific.

Mongolia has also been a key driving force to advance cooperation for clean energy, especially towards a North-East Asia power interconnection, leveraging from the country’s abundant renewable (solar and wind) energy resources. Energy cooperation finds strong resonance in relation to climate action and air pollution, given the North-East Asia subregion emits over one-third of global greenhouse gases and faces heavy impacts of air pollution.

With inherent constraints due to its fragile economic structure and environmental condition, Mongolia constantly needs to find balance between providing prompt policy responses in the face of volatile and unpredictable external shocks in the short-run and pursuing structural changes to address long-term socioeconomic issues. Under these circumstances, pursuing an integrated approach becomes an imperative for Mongolia to advance its national socioeconomic agenda, regional connectivity agenda and global sustainable development agenda, bolstering Mongolia’s resilience towards adverse economic, social and environmental shocks. To this end, I welcome Mongolia’s emphasis on the “whole of government” plus a “whole of society” approach.

Through the years, we have seen how Mongolia continues to be a steadfast partner of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) in promoting regional trade, connectivity and development across its various interrelated dimensions. Mongolia has also provided leadership in advancing regional cooperation agenda in the Asia-Pacific region by chairing the seventy-fifth session of UN ESCAP in May 2019.

Equipped with lessons learned from past development challenges and mindful of new directions and approaches to nurture future opportunities, Mongolia’s regional position and potential are on the rise. I am looking forward to partnering with Mongolia’s leadership to strengthen regional cooperation and achieve sustainable development by 2030 with the United Nations family

Humans migrated to Mongolia 10,000 years earlier than previously believed www.heritagedaily.com

Stone tools uncovered in Mongolia by an international team of archaeologists indicate that modern humans traveled across the Eurasian steppe about 45,000 years ago, according to a new University of California, Davis, study.
The date is about 10,000 years earlier than archaeologists previously believed.

The site also points to a new location for where modern humans may have first encountered their mysterious cousins, the now-extinct Denisovans, said Nicolas Zwyns, an associate professor of anthropology and lead author of the study.

Zwyns led excavations from 2011 to 2016 at the Tolbor-16 site along the Tolbor River in the Northern Hangai Mountains between Siberia and northern Mongolia.

The excavations yielded thousands of stone artifacts, with 826 stone artifacts associated with the oldest human occupation at the site. With long and regular blades, the tools resemble those found at other sites in Siberia and Northwest China — indicating a large-scale dispersal of humans across the region, Zwyns said.

“These objects existed before, in Siberia, but not to such a degree of standardization,” Zwyns said. “The most intriguing (aspect) is that they are produced in a complicated yet systematic way — and that seems to be the signature of a human group that shares a common technical and cultural background.”

That technology, known in the region as the Initial Upper Palaeolithic, led the researchers to rule out Neanderthals or Denisovans as the site’s occupants. “Although we found no human remains at the site, the dates we obtained match the age of the earliest Homo sapiens found in Siberia,” Zwyns said. “After carefully considering other options, we suggest that this change in technology illustrates movements of Homo sapiens in the region.”

The age of the site — determined by luminescence dating on the sediment and radiocarbon dating of animal bones found near the tools — is about 10,000 years earlier than the fossil of a human skullcap from Mongolia, and roughly 15,000 years after modern humans left Africa.

Evidence of soil development (grass and other organic matter) associated with the stone tools suggests that the climate for a period became warmer and wetter, making the normally cold and dry region more hospitable to grazing animals and humans.

Preliminary analysis identifies bone fragments at the site as large (wild cattle or bison) and medium size bovids (wild sheep, goat) and horses, which frequented the open steppe, forests and tundra during the Pleistocene — another sign of human occupation at the site.

The dates for the stone tools also match the age estimates obtained from genetic data for the earliest encounter between Homo sapiens and the Denisovans.

“Although we don’t know yet where the meeting happened, it seems that the Denisovans passed along genes that will later help Homo sapiens settling down in high altitude and to survive hypoxia on the Tibetan Plateau,” Zwyns said. “From this point of view, the site of Tolbor-16 is an important archaeological link connecting Siberia with Northwest China on a route where Homo sapiens had multiple possibilities to meet local populations such as the Denisovans.”

Fluorspar: Resource nationalism complicates mining investment in Mongolia www.roskill.com

Mongolian fluorspar production has rebounded in 2018 and 2019 with output being increased to supply markets affected by less readily available Chinese material. There is no domestic requirement for fluorspar, so all production is exported, mainly to China and Russia. Small shipments (typically totalling less than 20ktpy) are also sent sporadically to Japan, South Korea and Ukraine. Exports of acidspar to the USA previously averaged 15–30ktpy but now average less than 500tpy. By far the largest export market for Mongolian acidspar in 2018 was China. Exports of acidspar to China grew tenfold between 2016 and 2018, reaching an unprecedented 79kt, worth US$37M, in 2018.

Fluorspar miners and investors in the country have, however, been rattled by the attention focused this year by one of Mongolia’s parliamentary working groups on other mining projects. The Mongolian government considers investment in mining projects as a key driver of economic growth in 2019, but development of fluorspar mining, particularly acidspar mining, has been erratic despite the need for more acidspar raw material in nearby Asian markets.

Roskill View
Foreign direct investment in Mongolia’s extractive industries—which are based on extensive deposits of coal, copper, fluorspar, gold, molybdenum, tin, tungsten and uranium—has transformed Mongolia’s landlocked economy from its traditional dependence on herding and agriculture. Exports now account for more than 40% of GDP. Mongolia depends on China for more than 60% of its external trade. China receives some 90% of Mongolia’s exports and supplies Mongolia with more than one-third of its imports.

Mongolia has experienced frequent political changes over the last decade which have complicated the investment environment in the country and resource nationalism is reported to have increased in recent years. By far the largest fluorspar producer is the Russian/Mongolian joint venture Mongolrostsvetmet but a significant proportion of Mongolian fluorspar still comes from small scale and artisanal producers. Amid political uncertainty, Mongolia’s relations with China, its largest mineral importer, continue to remain positive. Mongolia is the door into one of the economic corridors of China’s Belt and Road Initiative; both sides of this door are intent on maintaining close political and economic ties to facilitate future trade.

Acidspar and metspar supplies remain tight worldwide and much of Mongolia’s 2019 production has already been sold, mostly into the Chinese and other Asian markets, with continuing strong demand from these markets and good prospects for additional sales.

Roskill’s Fluorspar: Global Industry, Markets & Outlook report breaks down the complex fluorine supply chain considerations into clear forecasts with price forecasts based on analysis of both supply and demand. Roskill will be speaking and chairing discussions at both the FastMarkets Fluorspar 2019 event in London and the IMFORMED Fluorine Forum 2019 event in Prague in September/October 2019.

United Nations ESCAP Executive Secretary meets Prime Minister of Mongolia www.akipress.com

Under Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and Pacific (ESCAP) Armida Salsiah Alisjahbanashe was received by Prime Minister of Mongolia U.Khurelsukh, Montsame reported.